Justin Taylor mentioned that ChristianAudio.com is offering “Pilgrim’s Progress” as their free audiobook for the month of June. If you haven’t had a chance to download it, I would highly recommend it. It’s probably my favorite book. I downloaded it before going on a 12-hour road trip to Ohio, and listening to it again was like visiting an old friend. Unfortunately, my battery ran out after a few hours of listening, so the nostalgia was lamentably short-lived. I’m eager to continue through the story as I have opportunity.

Here are six reasons I love Pilgrim’s Progress:

1. It was written in prison.

Bunyan wrote at least the first part of the allegory while he was imprisoned in a jail in Bedford, England. It adds grit to the tale that may not have been present had he written it in his study.

2. It is doused with Scripture.

Pilgrim’s Progress is stuffed with so many Scripture citations and allusions that listening to it for a time has the effect of washing my soul in the Word.

3. Bunyan is a poet.

Here is a sample. Christian, the main character, spends the early segment of the narrative weighed down with a heavy burden until he comes to a hill where stands a cross. On seeing the cross, the burden falls off his back and rolls down into a sepulchre (tomb) at the bottom of the hill. Christian explodes in metered praise:

“Thus far did I come laden with my sin,
Nor could aught ease the grief I was in,
Till I came hither. What a place is this!
Must here be the beginning of my bliss?
Must here the burden fall from off my back?
Must here the strings that bound it to me crack?
Blest cross! blest sepulchre! blest rather be
The Man that there was put to shame for me!”

4. It demonstrates that truth must not only be described, but painted.

This is one way Scripture is applied to the heart. Paul describes conversion in Romans 6 as a change in bondages and then writes, “I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations” (verse 19). Allegory is a biblically-warranted accommodation to the limitations of human nature. Bunyan employs the medium masterfully.

5. It addresses virtually every temptation a believer can face in this age.

Legalism, sloth, fear, greed, lust, despair. You name it, it’s there, and it’s described in such a way as to give backdoor pastoral counsel for the storm-tossed soul.

6. It’s older than the United States of America.

It’s good for me to get outside of my contemporary context and hear sound words from an older saint’s pen. It helps to guard me from infatuation with trendiness.